uglyb0b: My thoughts exactly. Every person I have shown this to had no idea that the phone was doing it or how to fix it. It doesn't make sense coming from Apple.

Really good point there, with the "new" multitasking it is totally up to the user to take care of it, Android and WP7 will end tasks when needed (usually) at the right times

Based on what I've heard previously and what others have suggested here I don't think that this is strictly correct. It's my understanding that iOS is supposed to withdraw system resources from any app that doesn't need to perform any further actions, hence effectively shutting the app down even though it will still appear in the 'double-tap' menu. So, in theory the multitasking environment shouldn't require any user intervention but in practice this doesn't actually seem to be the case, and I wonder if it's because of poorly written third party apps unnecessarily demanding system resources when they're idle.

It would be interesting if someone with a technical background in iOS could clarify this.

Alasta, here is a link to a walk through from a developer on the multi-tasking thing.

Re. general smartphone issues - I've certainly realised that they need to be treated more like a computer than a dumb-phone - which means that an occasional re-boot can solve all sorts of operational glitches. As regards iOS devices - something that may be voodoo (but seems to work): it can help to do a forced reboot if you're having issues: press the sleep & home button together & hold until the Apple icon comes on. For something similar to zapping the PRAM on a Mac: do as above but keep holding both buttons until you see the Apple icon go off and then come back on again. (hope that makes sense).

Personally I've found an IOS app called PKiller very useful - shows running processes and has option to kill processes then essential processes restart. Also displays memory allocations Wired / Active / Inactive / Free and shows allocation change as processes killed. There are a number of similar applications in the App Store but personally I've found the one to be the most useful of the ones I've seen.